


Three Years of Letters

by thepigeon



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Masturbation, Trans Male Character, Trans Newton Geiszler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 10:18:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17057951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepigeon/pseuds/thepigeon
Summary: What happens when you fall in love with your pen pal during the apocalypse?





	Three Years of Letters

**Author's Note:**

> I took a few liberties based on available information from the established pre-movie timeline, but let's face it, if you're a PR fan in 2018, you know that the canon is a mess.

In 2014 Dr. Hermann Gottlieb registered to an online forum to discuss the bizarre creatures that had emerged from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, and he regretted it within the first week.

The sheer scale of the catastrophe would naturally draw users from all walks of life, and many of them were processing feelings of terror, grief, and powerlessness in real time. That all was reasonable enough. But, really, now, was it too much for a scientist to ask questions, exchange ideas _,_ and receive valuable _data_ on a forum designed specifically for that purpose?

The first user to reply within his thread dedicated to logging data on the creatures’ activities and predicting the geographic location of their next appearance didn’t seem to take it so seriously. In fact, this “newwwts” person seemed intent on poking holes in all of the perfectly reasonable hypotheses Hermann had painstakingly laid out. Three days of using the account and drafting this post, and some stranger had immediately made him look like a fool. He fumed for an hour after reading the reply, then messaged the user directly.

 **HGottlieb:** Is this your idea of fun, then, to spoil a new thread with inane messages?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the user responded quickly.

 **newwwts:** oh man you’re actually mad

 **newwwts:** this is hilarious

As he suspected, this person did not take it seriously _at all_. Hermann began typing furiously.

 **HGottlieb:** You may derive a perverse pleasure from sowing discord with your pseudointellectual nonsense, but *some* of us are trying to find some *order* in this chaos. We have had three kaijus attack highly populated areas.

 **HGottlieb:** Three.

 **HGottlieb:** Is it too much for us to come together in an effort to understand_

Before he could finish, the user replied.

 **newwwts:** kaiju. no “s” on the plural

 **newwwts:** i mean, if we’re deferring to roberts and hyuga’s repurposing of the term to refer to pacific entities 001 through 003, mr science man

Hermann paused. Roberts and Hyuga were hardly household names. They were some of the only members of the nuclear technician team brought in during Trespasser’s attack to have any trace of a public profile. Aside from being the architects of the Oakland Defence, they had unwittingly popularized the existing Japanese word for the San Francisco entity and its successors.

 **HGottlieb:** Interesting. You have done a bit of research, haven’t you.

 **newwwts:** lol a bit

 **newwwts:** you did your digging too i guess but it’s no good if your entire hypothesis is busted

The _nerve_ of - ! Hermann started drafting a response but before he could begin the second paragraph the user had dropped in a link to a PDF with two familiar data sets connected in a way he hadn’t considered before. It proposed an alternate description of the kaiju’s origin point or points and coordinates for possible future landfall locations.

 **newwwts:** as you said, got a lot of ocean to cover and not a lot of publicly available data. but it’ll happen again and there’s a pattern behind it. if they were smart they’d canvas southeast asia again, or maybe australia. good talk, buddy.

 

Two months later, Entity 004 - or “Scissure,” as the leaked ops designation became known - emerged off the coast of Sydney. Hermann logged back in to his account and found a message waiting.

 **newwwts:** i mean i would say i told you so but that would be crass and i’d be sowing disorder and chaos, wouldn’t i, mr science man

 **HGottlieb:** Gottlieb. Dr. Hermann Gottlieb.

 **newwwts:** lol i know, it’s in your forum signature

 **HGottlieb:** And you?

 **newwwts:** newt’s fine, dude

 **HGottlieb:** It really isn’t.

 **newwwts:** you don’t gotta type all the w’s

Newt leaned back in his desk chair and idly spun in a circle. So he came back. At least he was capable of admitting when he’d had his virtual ass handed to him. He glanced at Gottlieb’s profile and ran another search on the guy, and to his surprise he dug up a new result. No photos, no sordid personal details, but his name was included in the winning team listed for a university-level AI programming competition held last month.

So this dweeb dabbled in artificial intelligence as well as the particle physics he referenced in his original post. Newt researched the competition and the teams, and within half an hour he was able to determine the British university he was affiliated with, the department listing in which his surname was misspelled (German names, gotta love ‘em), and the proper label with which to address physical mail for adjuncts and other faculty. Newt had an idea but it involved going outside, and he’d have to dig through his laundry for a bra.

 

 

It was too early in the school year for anyone to take him up seriously on visiting during office hours, so Hermann spent the better part of an hour reading any news he could find about this multinational organization being cobbled together by the Pacific coalition. It was ambitious, but then again, the Sydney attack had been particularly brutal. He searched for the name of a colleague he had become acquainted with over the course of the Lovelace Prize, who had been telling him about the interesting work she was doing at Exeter before she had gone uncharacteristically radio silent. He suspected she had been poached for a project not entirely unrelated to this… “Defence Corps,” and wondered if it would be worth reaching out to her again and attempting to prove his suspicion correct.

He ambled down the staircase - nearly tripping, the second time this week! - to the mailroom, and upon opening his box noticed an unusual envelope with international postage and a return address from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He opened it in the mailroom, cautiously but curiously. Who on earth did he know from MIT? His suspicions had placed his Exeter colleague as somewhere on the western coast of Canada, perhaps Alaska.

The contents of the envelope contained a printed transcript of the conversation with his forum adversary, accentuated with notations, numbers and comments in a handwritten scrawl. Scattered among them were doodles of - yes, that was what they were - the kaiju sighted thus far, although the artist had taken the liberty of adding angry eyebrows. On the final page, written in the same careless hand:

_you don’t go online enough, so i’m sending more corrections. use the return address below when you want to yell at me, and include a chocolate bar for my trouble. ich bin auch ein kultivierter so i want the good stuff._

It was punctuated with a drawing of a newt.

 

 

The package in Newt’s PO box was not as large as he was hoping for and the size of the candy bar inside was downright miserly. He placed the package on top of the stack of medical bills and paperwork he’d rather ignore, studying the neat looping handwriting on the label. Then again, Gottlieb did send this international, and postage was getting expensive. Everything was getting expensive.

Once home, he logged back into the forum and sent Gottlieb a private message. He replied a few hours later, after Newt had reviewed the painstakingly handwritten sheets of equations that had come with the chocolate.

 **newwwts:** this chocolate is tiny, dude

 **HGottlieb:** Spoken like someone who hasn’t eaten it yet.

 **newwwts:** …shit yeah, that’s the good stuff

 **newwwts:** you pass

 **HGottlieb:** When can I expect to learn your real name?

 **newwwts:** i told you what you needed. newt’s fine

 **HGottlieb:** I suppose if I were to be just as forward (and as aggressively albeit creatively rude), I could conduct my own internet sleuthing as to the identity of a German-American man within the MIT campus, most likely the biology department, but I am above that sort of thing.

 **newwwts:** lmaooooo good luck with that

 **HGottlieb:** Are you saying my line of thinking is incorrect or that I lack the willpower to resist investigating you?

 **newwwts:** both

 

 

To his fury, Hermann’s adversary was prescient on both counts. He finally gave in to temptation and spent the better part of an evening combing through all of the public records he could find for a match within the biology department, then the university, and then the neighboring universities in the Boston metropolitan area, with absolutely no success. A week later, he received another sheaf of heavily annotated documents on MIT stationery, but as he flipped through them a small item slipped out and dropped onto the floor. As Hermann stooped to pick them up (nearly losing his balance doing so) he realized it was a tightly folded packet of pages blotted with the black ink of multiple redactions. It looked as though it had been scanned, embedded with digital artifacts in the PDF conversion process, printed, and then sloppily photocopied, but Hermann could still make out some words. “Anchorage,” “artificial synapses,” “-ns Interface,” “Pentecost.”

“Jaeger.”

 

 **HGottlieb:** The sheer scale of what these documents suggest is staggering. How on earth did you obtain them?

 **newwwts:** lotta weird talk in my circles. senior staff signing nda’s and packing their bags. do you think the ppdc can pull this off?

 **HGottlieb:** What, constructing enormous robots on the scale of the kaiju we’ve observed? Are you serious?

 **newwwts:** myeah

 **newwwts:** i mean, you’re the ai expert here, aren’t you

 **newwwts:** can someone actually pilot a machine like this?

 **HGottlieb:** I never told you that.

 **newwwts:** it’s true tho

 **HGottlieb:** Well,

 **HGottlieb:** I predict that some*one* could not pilot this, no, because piloting a humanoid construct this large and complex would take a significant toll on an individual connected to the interface they describe. It would be better if they used at least two pilots, but I still don’t like the sound of it, not at all.

 **newwwts:** i think you meant that to sound more momentous than it actually does. you don’t like anything

 **HGottlieb:** I can annotate the documents and point out the aspects of the interface that I find particularly intriguing, if troubling.

 **newwwts:** yessss do my work for me

 **newwwts:** man, i’m glad i sent this to you. made the effort to get them feel worthwhile

 **HGottlieb:** You never did explain how you obtained them.

 **newwwts:** (´・ω・`)

 

The now regular exchange of letters and messages distracted Hermann from the global tension that began to build since year’s end in anticipation of the next attack. The tension led to rumors, and within Hermann’s community of programmers and engineers the rumors grew very strange indeed. Word spread of a facility on Kodiak Island, and neurologists flocking there to study a new, undocumented medical procedure. As a blustery March began, names and phrases emerged that solidified the rumors and gave them shape. Dr. Caitlin Lightcap and her team had developed a piloting interface that cleared the runway for the vehicle known by the codename Brawler Yukon. A procedure involving two pilots.

 **HGottlieb:** You have some explaining to do, and frankly I’m an idiot for not questioning you sooner.

 **newwwts:** wha

 **HGottlieb:** You’re an insider. You’ve been involved the entire time. You’ve been *using* me, spoon-feeding me details about your precious Jaeger project so you can benefit from my curiosity without offering me any recognition or compensation for my contributions!

 **newwwts:** i

 **newwwts:** is this cuz you heard about the two pilots thing?

 **newwwts:** wow, i’m flattered, dude, but you did much better last time. i’m just a phd who knows how to sneak into the right offices.

 **HGottlieb:** How do I know you’re even a doctor?

 **newwwts:** cuuuuuz i said so?

 **HGottlieb:** You’ve told me nothing. Nothing at all about who you are.

 **newwwts:** look, i told you enough. and i have my reasons for holding the rest back.

 **HGottlieb:** Why should I believe anything you say? Everything I assumed about you might be a complete fabrication. You could have been playing me for a fool this entire time by claiming you were something you were not.

 **newwwts:** FUCK

 **newwwts:** YOU

“ _Fuck_ you,” Newt barked, shoving the phone to the bottom of his bag. Not even _he_ was going to make this easy. Not a single goddamn person was making this easy for him. He stormed down the hall, past all the lab techs (everyone was taller, everybody was so much taller than him and he looked like a child playing dress up, _fuck_ him) and walked across the quad to the mail room. He was literally about to mail the next stupid letter, he was going to mail it _today_ , and that - that _Erbsenzähler_ accused him of being a _fake._

He pulled the sealed envelope out of his bag, tossed it up in the air a few times, and was struck with an idea after the third or fourth catch. The paperwork wasn’t finalized yet, but fuck it. _Fuck_ it. It was real enough. It had always been real.

He pulled out the thickest marker in his bag and uncapped it.

 

 

Hermann had given up on any further response from the other user and was taken aback by the next letter in his box - not just its presence, but the fact that every square inch of the envelope was covered in thick handwritten block letters. Squeezing around the destination address, they spelled out:

**NEWTON GEISZLER**

And when Hermann turned the letter over to open it, he was met with three even more enormous letters covering the entire back side.

**PHD**

Dr. Newton Geiszler did indeed appear to be among the faculty in MIT’s biology department, though there was no photograph to go along with the short brief about his publications and line of research. Hermann was _positive_ that name did not exist when he scoured the web page last year, and yet he found no compelling evidence to suggest the person or the credentials were manufactured. In fact, Dr. Geiszler appeared to be pursuing another degree, his - _sixth?_ Hermann scanned the brief again. Yes, his sixth. Biology. Biological engineering. Electrical engineering and computer science, and on and on. And he was only 25 years old. Hermann would have found it ludicrous if the entire idea didn’t infuriate him, and that was how he knew, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that all of this was entirely real.

 

 

In the last week of April, another one emerged. Newt made a mad dash from the dinner table to turn on his dad’s TV, and as he and his uncle joined him in their den they watched a tall, spindly, terrifyingly _humanoid_ kaiju stride through Vancouver Harbor. An hour later, every camera and phone captured the other figure entering the bay - a bulky aircraft carrier on two stubby legs that wobbled steadily toward the invader. It was slow, ungainly, but it grappled with the creature and landed blow after decisive blow with its enormous gunmetal fists.

And it won.

The next day, the campus buzzed with the distracted energy one came to expect following news of a kaiju attack, but the tenor was different this time. Hopeful. Newt picked up his mail and, despite his best efforts to resist temptation, immediately ripped open the international envelope. A packet of the latest analysis of exotic radiation measured throughout the North Pacific Current, and a generously-sized chocolate bar wrapped in silver foil and a German label.

 

 **newwwts:** where’s the chocolate from

 **HGottlieb:** My sister still lives in our hometown and sends me care packages every once in a while.

 **HGottlieb:** I thought you might enjoy it. It’s quite good.

 **HGottlieb:** They’re starting to look human now.

 **newwwts:** i don’t think it’s a trend. there’s no evolutionary thru-line in the entities we’ve seen so far. it’s like they’re rolling the dice and just ended up on hominid.

 **newwwts:** did you hear what they’re calling this one

 **HGottlieb:** I hadn’t.

 **newwwts:** karloff

 **newwwts:** cuz of the head

 **HGottlieb:** Dr. Geiszler, that thing *killed* people.

 **newwwts:** i’m not the one naming em

 **newwwts:** wish i was, tbh, but at least someone in the ppdc has a sense of humor.

 **HGottlieb:** Hm. Yes.

Hermann rubbed his eyes and glanced out his window. It was evening and the rain fell in a steady patter onto the roof of his drafty apartment building. He sipped from his mug and swished the tea in his mouth before he resumed typing.

 **HGottlieb:** The engineers in the Jaeger program have accomplished a marvellous thing.

 **newwwts:** it got the job done

 **newwwts:** sure was ugly, tho

 **HGottlieb:** They’ll either need to do something about the synaptic reaction time within the hardware or compensate in the way they train their pilots. Most likely a bit from column A and a bit from column B.

 **newwwts:** you wish you were there

His damned underuse of punctuation meant Hermann couldn’t tell if he was asking a question or asserting a fact. He supposed it didn’t matter.

 **HGottlieb:** I do. You are obviously a very accomplished person across multiple fields, so perhaps you will not identify with what I am about to describe.

 **HGottlieb:** I had never felt at any point in my education that I measured up to anyone’s expectations. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a disappointment. But as I’ve watched these multinational organizations collaborate on this massive undertaking - and watched them start to *succeed* - I’ve envisioned a *place* for myself among them. I’ve envisioned a way for me to volunteer my efforts and do my part.

 **HGottlieb:** I wonder if this is what it felt like when we realized that we, as a people, as a species, could go to the moon.

 **newwwts:** wowowow you’re a real romantic aren’t you

 **HGottlieb:** You needn’t make fun of me.

 **newwwts:** i’m not, dude. what do you think went through my head when i saw that fucking thing surface off the coast of california two years ago? i realized my life was going to be completely different from that moment on. i couldn’t waste it being miserable in a white-walled lab when there are fucking MONSTERS walking around

 **newwwts:** we’re energized by the same thing in different packages

 **newwwts:** the siren song of the macroorganism

Hermann sat back and digested this while he massaged a leg that had somehow fallen asleep. Dr. Geiszler was a strange, opaque, prickly man, but at least in this respect he felt like he could understand him.

 **newwwts:** where’s your sister live

 **newwwts:** like, your hometown

 **HGottlieb:** What, you don’t already know?

 **newwwts:** i’ll trade ya

 **HGottlieb:** Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

 **newwwts:** not a lot of astronauts coming out of bavaria

 **HGottlieb:** There are plenty. They just grow up to be something else. Und du, wurdest du in Amerika geboren?

 **newwwts:** kreuzberg

 **HGottlieb:** Berlin. Good lord, that explains everything.

 **newwwts:** lmao

 

The next day Dr. Geiszler linked him to a rather shaky video of a musical performance in a small Boston dive. The band members included a guitar player, a drummer, and a keyboardist, all contributing vocals. They were… good enough. He invited Dr. Geiszler to elaborate on why he shared the video or who any of these people were, but the damned fool refused to add anything other than a shrug emoji. Hermann ground his teeth.

Dr. Geiszler, however, was the first one to inform him about the PPDC’s training program for Jaeger pilots and support staff within their newly declassified Alaska base. Hermann submitted his application and to his astonishment, received an acceptance letter emblazoned with the PPDC eagle. That same afternoon he submitted a request to the university for a half-year sabbatical and mailed it out along with another package of chocolate bars for Dr. Geiszler. Upon arriving at the so-called “Academy,” Hermann was pleased to discover that the communications blackout had lightened significantly in the past few months and he was able to maintain at least some contact with his siblings and colleagues.

 **HGottlieb:** The number of thresholds a pair of pilots are required to reach in order to maintain a stable Drift is, frankly, too high. Dr. Lightcap was able to answer a few of my questions about the procedure in the introductory seminar, but it’s no wonder they’re being so choosy with their pairs.

 **newwwts:** don’t want to turn anyone’s brains into soup

 **newwwts:** have you figured out where they’re keeping the samples yet

 **HGottlieb:** Tragically, no. I imagine their research labs are off-limits to the cadets.

 **newwwts:** bawww

 **HGottlieb:** Apply to the Academy and undergo the tests yourself if you want to see a kaiju gallblabder so baflu.

 **newwwts:** holy shit, was that a spelling error

 **newwwts:** who are you and how did you hack into hermann’s account

 **HGottlieb:** What? Don’t be dramatic.

 **HGottlieb:** My vision’s been blurring lately, but I’m sure I’m just exhausted. Nine hour time zone difference, aftet s;;

 

Several weeks later, Newt spent one of his last free days before the start of the new semester taking the train out to the ocean. This was the first summer in, god, probably a decade where he wasn’t worrying about hiding his weird body underneath sweatshirts and oversized t-shirts. T was a wonder drug. He gazed out at the Atlantic - the broad, placid, predictable Atlantic - and imagined what it would be like to watch an enormous creature emerge from the depths and pass over you as it loped across the rocks. To watch an gargantuan robot take it down, level a city block, leave the creature’s body to decompose into a skeleton more monumental than any human building. To be reminded that you are miniscule. That your biggest, most far-reaching actions will never be as consequential as a kaiju walking along a shoreline.

Newt thought about getting a tattoo.

His phone alerted him to a new message from Hermann. He sank into some nearby shade and opened the text thread.

 **HGottlieb:** I have officially been removed from the Academy pilot track. My training will resume on the research track after a few weeks of medical leave.

 **newwwts:** jesus, herms, what did you do??? break your leg? get in a fight with a bigger, beefier cadet?

 **HGottlieb:** No, I

 **HGottlieb:** No.

 **HGottlieb:** The chronic vision problem was investigated and connected to symptoms I had been experiencing with my mobility and balance. It

 **HGottlieb:** It will get worse.

 **HGottlieb:** It will be like this until the end.

 **newwwts:** oh

 **newwwts:** fuck, dude

 **newwwts:** i’m sorry

 **HGottlieb:** There will still be a place for me in PPDC affairs, I have been led to believe. They’re carrying on a lot of conversations about Mark-2 Jaegers within earshot.

 **HGottlieb:** But my place won’t be what I hoped for.

 **newwwts:** hermann

 **HGottlieb:** Please apply, Newton. It might be you.

 **HGottlieb:** You might have a chance to face the beast.

 **HGottlieb:** Or at least cart home its bloody gallbladder.

 

Newt applied to the Academy that semester, and was accepted to join the research track in the early spring. There were no familiar faces to greet him at the Kodiak Island runway, however, as Hermann had been enlisted in November to join a team of programmers and engineers to observe the first real series of Jaeger launches. Russia, Japan, mainland America, China, and Japan again. Around Christmas Newt received a heavily processed and man-handled envelope with a small figurine inside - the spindly Karloff, reinterpreted as a cutesy anime girl. Hermann had included a note, in his precise looping script:

_I found this in a shop while on leave from the Tacit launch. Utterly tasteless, so I imagine you will enjoy it._

Newt adored it.

Onibaba ravaged Tokyo near the end of Newt’s time at the Academy, and all of the cadets and staff were mobilized to monitor the communications, the climate and exotic particle flow, any supporting role that would allow the temporary Tokyo launch bay to buckle down and survive the operation. He watched a fleet of helicopters land and a parade of freshly collected samples - meat and fluid and chitin sloughed right off the corpse - roll into the labs. He wondered if the store Hermann had bought his gift from was flattened this morning by the creature whose remains he’d be dissecting tonight. He looked up again and watched a hazmat team encircle the next group of passengers to disembark - the Jaeger pilots. The Rangers. And clinging to one of them, a shellshocked little girl. Newt ducked his head and wheeled in his tank.

 

 

Hermann was next assigned to the newly established Shatterdome in Lima, Peru (“god, these idiots are having way too much fun naming shit,” Newton wrote), where he helped author the programming framework for the new Jaeger series guarding the Central and South American coasts. The construction crews had barely retreated before the permanent staff flowed in, and Hermann did his best to navigate the still-unfinished landing bays without giving away his inexperience using a cane. He ignored the glances that lasted a beat too long.

The kaiju hit Tokyo again not once but _twice_ , and Newton appeared to have been shuttled out that way to help study and categorize their sudden glut of specimens and material. He was thrilled at the assignment, and Hermann had to frequently endure Newton describe truly disgusting-sounding autopsies with the delighted air of a friend learning how to bake more and more complex desserts.

Clearly the PPDC brass had noticed his enthusiasm for the work as well. When a kaiju made landfall on the Long Beach waterfront early in the new year, Newton was quickly promoted and ordered to direct the tissue collection operation himself.

 **newwwts:** they’re calling it yamarashi over here. dunno if that’s gonna be its official designation tho

 **HGottlieb:** I imagine you’re going to finally have a say in the matter.

 **newwwts:** FUCK you’re right!!! i’m the number one los angeles kaiju man!

 **newwwts:** i’m unstoppable

 **HGottlieb:** Oh, dear.

Hermann took a moment to gaze out his office window onto the launch bay below. A large team of technicians were following his colleague across the bay - they were apparently rebuilding a significant section of the Mazatlan shoreline into a base for a new Mark-3. He glanced back at his screen.

 **newwwts:** hey, while i’ve got you

 **newwwts:** can i ask you something?

 **HGottlieb:** Yes?

 **newwwts:** how come it’s so hard to find pictures of you? like, i still don’t have a solid idea of what you even look like

 **HGottlieb:** I could ask you the same question.

 **newwwts:** i’m up to my elbows in viscera on the daily, dude! that’s not getting into any ppdc literature

 **newwwts:** when i was doing my early detective work i never found a photo. no social media, no nothing. everything about you said “stuffy time traveler who can’t get back to queen victoria’s jubilee”

 **HGottlieb:** Well, at the time, I did not exactly have a broad circle of friends. I wrote letters to my family, I had my colleagues across the quad. No need to publicize myself further.

 **HGottlieb:** These days, well. I would rather have my work speak for myself as opposed to my image.

 **newwwts:** nah, i get it

 **newwwts:** i was a real uh late bloomer in the image department

 **newwwts:** but i was thinking bout how it’s been like 3 years since we started talking and whenever i need to visualize your face all i see is like a cartoon owl

 **HGottlieb:** How uncharitable!

 **newwwts:** but it’s asio otus

 **newwwts:** so it’s a cute owl

Hermann chuckled.

 **HGottlieb:** It appears we would both have something to gain, so let me propose this:

 **HGottlieb:** I’ll trade you.

 **newwwts:** waitwaitwait for real???

 **HGottlieb:** It does seem rather silly for neither of us to know what the other looks like after all this time. I will send you a photograph in the next letter, and you will send me one in return.

 **newwwts:** hey uhhh herms you know that there are like these devices called phones and they all have cameras in them

 **newwwts:** i could literally send you a picture of my ass before you close your browser

 **HGottlieb:** That is the typical laziness I am forced to anticipate from Dr. Newton Geiszler. I expect you to put in more effort.

 **newwwts:** whatever dad

Hermann rose, stretching, from his chair, and realized he would never hear the end of it if he did not expend some considerable effort himself. He thought for a few moments, then spun and walked briskly down the hallway. “Vanessa! Are you going to lunch?”

 

“You look as though you’re going to break into a sprint at any second.”

“Vanessa, we hardly have this room _reserved_.”

His colleague fiddled with the lens settings on her camera, tossing her long hair over her shoulder. Her official designation was resident particle analyst for the recently-discovered Breach. She was just as well known, within the department, anyway, for her photography hobby. “We won’t get in trouble. And we really do need the table and the afternoon light.”

Hermann braced his fingertips on the smooth wooden surface. The conference room contained the best furniture in the Shatterdome by far, although that was because its purpose was to serve top military personnel and heads of state. “I needn’t look so high-rank. He knows what my position is here. All I ask is that you frame it nicely.”

“If you’re going to send one of my photos to your boyfriend in California, I’m not going to half-ass it.”

Hermann glared at her as she began clicking the shutter. “He’s _not_ \- “

“Right, right. He’s just a colleague that you agreed to exchange pictures with after talking to him every day since you arrived, and you just want to make sure whatever you send him is better than what he sends you.”

He fluttered his eyes shut. “Precisely. Now you’re coming around.”

“You’d better make sure you pay me with some of that German chocolate, too.”

 

 

Newt was taken aback by the presence of the photograph in the next envelope. He honestly didn’t think Hermann was serious when he promised to send him one. Moreover, the one he included was… striking. It was a picture of a man, mid-twenties, pale and thin, seated at a polished wooden table; his face angular, his haircut severe, his tweed jacket well-worn at the elbows.

“He looks like he was extruded from a machine.” Newt murmured. He didn’t stop studying the photograph.

The man, he noticed, held himself with a stiffness uncharacteristic of someone his age. His long fingers rested on the table in front of him waiting for instructions; his downcast face was lit by sunlight from a nearby window. But the photographer was good. They had watched their subject for that moment when he shifted, relaxed, flicked his eyes upward to glance at the camera through his thick eyelashes. They had caught a genuine emotion beneath the stiff neutralness - he looked alert, almost annoyed, like he was about to admonish the photographer for lingering too long or for daring to crack a joke.

Newt remembered that, theoretically, he now owed this man a photo of his own. He thought about facing this man and letting him chew him out the way he’d let Hermann do in writing for years now. He couldn’t stop looking at his broad mouth.

“God, this dude could _destroy_ me.”

That evening after his shift, Newt hitched a ride on one of the relief trucks and hopped off when they reached the depot outside of Little Tokyo. This side of town hadn’t been hit so bad when Yamarashi made landfall, if you didn’t count the restaurants that had the seafood excised from their menus and the grocery stores that ran low on “luxuries” like fruit and tampons. All the same, locals and tourists were milling around the central square like any other Saturday night, listening to a woman in a PPDC salvage crew uniform do a pretty great karaoke rendition of _La Carcacha_. Newt ambled down another pedestrian walkway, this one named after an astronaut. He took a picture of the street sign so he could tell Hermann about it later, and remembered their deal. Their goddamn stupid deal, Newt, you _idiot_.

He leaned against the side of a building, aimlessly flicking though his phone’s camera settings, when he gaze wandered to the arcade across the street. Two giggling teen girls were clambering out of a small curtained booth. He got an idea.

 

 

Newton’s next letter contained a thin sheet of glossy paper with a message scrawled across it.

_you owe me 4 more photos now lol_

Hermann didn’t understand what he meant until he turned the sheet over and realized a series of five small photos were printed on the back, like a strip you’d receive from a photo booth. He didn’t think those existed anymore. As he looked over the images, however, he noticed the photos themselves were obscured with stickers - sparkles and flowers and cartoon alien heads forming a garish border around every single one.

The subject of the photos himself - what Hermann could see of him - was a man with a boyish face in a black t-shirt and jeans. In one photo his arms were folded across his chest, in the next he pointed finger guns at the photo booth screen, and so on, but in all of them he was grinning broadly, gleefully. His brown hair stuck up every which way and his glasses reflected the glare of the screen. Sticking out from beneath his left shirt sleeve, Hermann noticed, was an intricate tattoo snaking around his upper arm. He couldn’t tell what it was. If Hermann didn’t recognize Newton’s handwriting he would have guessed this man to be considerably younger than he knew Newton to be - after all, what kind of doctor would wear a shirt with a - was that a _shark wearing sunglasses?_

 **HGottlieb:** I regret that I didn’t elaborate on what constituted as “effort.”

 **newwwts:** c’moooooon. that was effort. that was 5x effort

 **newwwts:** now the tables have turned. i am the clear winner

 **HGottlieb:** Unacceptable.

A few hours later, Hermann recorded his progress on the half-finished framework for the next Mark-3, rose from his desk stiffly, chose a set of pajamas from the dresser and ran a hot shower. He leaned on the shower handrail to steady himself, wincing, and thought again of Newton’s pictures, the man buried underneath those ridiculous stickers. That photo booth was so small it was truly difficult to tell if he was a large man or not, but he was certainly a little stout. The garish light had made the freckles on his forearms stand out, and well, Newton had mentioned conducting much of his fieldwork outside in the pleasant California sunshine, damn him.

He thought about that untidy hair, that effortless grin, those eyes he could barely make out through the glare on his glasses, but they were there, bright green, focused as if he were actually looking at Hermann, looking at his face and nowhere else. He thought about the stubble on his chin and how rough that must feel. He wondered how much of those arms were muscle. He wondered if - good lord, was he _getting an erection?_

Hermann hastily turned the water off and dried himself. He supposed it could have been caused by anything, really, now that his joints and muscles were finally relaxed after sitting in one position for far too long. It certainly had nothing to do with idly thinking about a man he had never _met_ in real life.

He dressed and limped over to bed, slid between the sheets, and pulled the chain on his nightstand lamp. The erection didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Hermann sighed. It _had_ been a while since he had felt a strong desire towards anyone in particular, and even longer since anyone had expressed any interest in him. This was the logical result, he supposed. He shifted restlessly for a few more minutes in the darkened bedroom before he huffed impatiently and began adjusting himself through the fabric of his trousers.

That tattoo beneath his shirt sleeve, Hermann thought. Newton hadn’t said anything about having tattoos. “Ridiculous. Why would he say anything?” Hermann muttered.

He wondered how large it was. Did it merely cover the bicep? Or did it stretch up over the rest of his arm, beyond his shoulder, something he would have to remove his shirt to show off? Did he have freckles on his shoulders too, and his back? Would he glance over his shoulder as Hermann counted them, turn around so he could admire his chest, his… stomach…

Hermann pulled down the sheets, dipped his hand below his waistband and started running his fingertips along his prick. It was ludicrous to think about someone like _that_ looking at Hermann _that_ way, but he thought about the man casually wrapping a bare arm around his waist and mischievously sliding his hand down his back, the calluses on his palm catching on the fabric of his shirt just for a moment.

How easy might it be for him to take a seat and prop Hermann up so he can straddle his waist, he thought, stroking faster now. Hermann could settle his weight comfortably on his good leg so he could feel how closely they’re pressed together, _yes_ , feel him through the fabric of his trousers. He thought about how that man might comb his other hand through his hair, so _carefree_ , before dragging that hand down over Hermann’s chest, stopping at his belt, _like that_ , his smile flashing in the corner of Hermann’s vision. Undoing the belt now, sliding his hand in, wrapping around him -

Hermann moaned, pulling up his shirt so he could come onto his stomach without making a mess. He exhaled and sank deeper into his pillow. Irresponsible. This entire thing was irresponsible. That man was a fantasy, not the same man he’d been corresponding with for years now. Newton, the real Newton, was just a biologist doing thankless work in America, one with a sharp tongue and an immature sense of humor.

“Don’t make him into something he’s not,” Hermann sighed as he pulled a flannel from his nightstand to clean himself off. “The real Dr. Geiszler is _quite_ enough.”

 

 

“Mother _fuck_ ,” Newt gasped, gripping the pillow with his free hand.

He’d held off, he’d really tried, but it’d been three hours without drifting asleep to the sound of traffic and he’d decided, screw it, to pull out the photo and The Annihilator.

The strongest vibrator he owned had earned its name several times over, and he could tell it was going to give him a good one tonight by the way his skin had started to prickle on his arms and legs. He had gazed at that man in Hermann’s photo - Hermann, he was looking at Hermann - starting with his mouth and those fucking _fingers_. God, Newt could feel those fingers in his hair, a disapproving expression on Hermann’s face as he leaned over him. He was definitely taller than him. He _definitely_ had a big dick.

Newt couldn’t turn The Annihilator to any higher of a setting, so he pressed it more firmly against himself as if that’d actually do anything, moron. Hermann could call him a moron. Hermann could fucking push him onto his back all while coolly carrying on a conversation. “Now, Newton,” he’d murmur, pressing himself inside him, “you’re not going to lie there and convince me that that the radioactive decay from your latest sample actually _confirms_ your far-fetched theory about universal particle emissions across Breach events, are you?”

“Uh huh,” Newt panted. That smug bastard must have a British accent. He could insult him in every language he knew as he folded Newt in half, fucked him faster, ran those fingers over Newt’s cock, his sleeves rolled up, his neat hair mussed, his lips parted, fuck, shit, _fuck_ -

Newt didn’t come to his senses until almost a minute later, when he turned off the vibrator that had started skittering across the bed the second he’d let go of it. Did he yell? He had probably yelled. If he didn’t leave the dorm until 8:45 tomorrow morning he could avoid the neighbor that’d want to pull him aside in the hallway and telling him to keep it down, and _please_ don’t do it after midnight. Yeah. Yeah, that’d work.

He was nodding off now, finally, but Newton wondered if he should lose sleep over the fact that he just jerked off to a photo of a penpal two continents away. “Whatever,” he mumbled, turning onto his stomach. “He’s gonna _shit_ when he reads about the isotopes I matched across Vancouver, Tokyo, _and_ LA specimens.”

 

 

By the fall of that year, Hermann had the opportunity to supervise the launch of the Mexican Jaeger and fine-tune the connections of the pilots to the interface. The entire operation and timetable was eccentric, even by the PPDC’s standards, but it was run by a fine crew. The Mark-3s would likely enjoy a longer career than their predecessors.

Upon his return to Lima, Hermann received a regular update about the status of the new series still under construction. One of these Mark-4s, he noticed, was slated to be stationed in the Los Angeles Shatterdome. Without pausing to unpack, Hermann shot off a message to the PPDC headquarters and another message to Newton.

 **HGottlieb:** Newton, I bear some interesting news.

 **newwwts:** oh yeah?

 **HGottlieb:** They have commenced talks on where to house the 4s.

 **HGottlieb:** Mammoth is earmarked for Los Angeles. I want

 **HGottlieb:** I have contacted the brass about letting me take that one. It seems like a good opportunity.

 **newwwts:** opportunity

 **HGottlieb:** To meet you, you imbecile.

Newt had been idly spinning around on his chair in the middle of his lab, but upon reading this he froze. He glanced around the lab, making sure his techs weren’t snooping, and reread the message while he chewed his thumbnail.

 **newwwts:** that

 **newwwts:** is cool. that is a cool thing. mammoth is a terrible name, tho

 **HGottlieb:** You are significantly less enthusiastic about this than I was expecting.

 **newwwts:** what

 **newwwts:** nononono this is cool for you. everything is cool

 **HGottlieb:** If you would rather not deal with this distraction, I can always request Panama instead.

 _“Shit!”_ Newt hissed. Two of the lab techs turned to glance at him and he balled his fist over his mouth.

 **newwwts:** listen i am in the middle of a shift. don’t uh talk to hq about panama or anything don’t do it

 **newwwts:** i’ll be back at 1730 PST

 **HGottlieb:** That’s fine.

It was _not_ fine. It was absolutely not fine and Newt couldn’t articulate why. He felt like an idiot in the way that he only tolerated when Hermann was grilling him, but he absolutely could not act like an idiot when he talked to him tonight. He spent the next hour storming through corridors, just barely avoiding collisions with the towering pairs of Rangers who skirted around him before they resumed walking in step.

That evening, in his dormitory, Newt fiddled around with items on his desk before he could bear to open the text window.

 **newwwts:** ok i’m here

 **HGottlieb:** As am I.

 **HGottlieb:** Have I done something wrong?

 **newwwts:** nonono fuck shit you haven’t done anything wrong

 **newwwts:** i um

 **newwwts:** i am very excited at the idea of you coming to see me. here.

 **newwwts:** but it also freaks me out

 **HGottlieb:** Why?

Newt took several breaths, flicking his gaze around his dorm. God, it was messy. He was a mess.

 **newwwts:** i think i like you. i think i like you a lot.

 **newwwts:** but

 **newwwts:** i’m afraid

 **newwwts:** i study organisms with teeth that are as long as an eighth-grader is tall, and i’m afraid of us meeting

 **newwwts:** i’m afraid that if i meet you i’ll realize that what i actually like is a three year long chat log and a picture of a man

 **newwwts:** and i’m afraid that if you meet me it’ll just confirm that you tolerated me at best

Hermann stared. The room was silent other than the dull roar of the waves below his narrow slotted window.

 **HGottlieb:** Newton, you know I have no patience for platitudes and lies.

 **HGottlieb:** So believe me when I say,

 **HGottlieb:** I don’t believe that will happen.

 **HGottlieb:** You are the most infuriating, unpredictable, clever person I have had the opportunity to correspond with. Furthermore, you have qualities that I will admit are attractive, not just in general but to me, personally.

From his perspective, it was a drastic oversight to gloss over the fact that Hermann had fantasized about him to the point of masturbation, let alone pretend he had only done it that one time, but given the state of things, a lie through omission seemed acceptable.

 **HGottlieb:** I would be

 **HGottlieb:** Frankly, I would be very disappointed to let this opportunity to see you pass me by.

 **HGottlieb:** But ultimately, it is up to you. If you permit me to visit, I shall.

Newt rocked back and forth on his bed. “He’s fucking with me he’s _gotta_ be fucking with me, I can’t - I can’t - I can’t -“

He breathed out shallowly and ran a hand through his hair, closing his eyes. He thought about Hermann lying there beside him, hand folded neatly over his. He wondered what he looked like when he smiled.

 **newwwts:** please come see me, hermann

 **newwwts** : we can’t go back to this if we don’t try

 **newwwts:** besides

 **newwwts:** fortune favors the brave, right?

 **HGottlieb:** That is how the saying goes.

 **HGottlieb:** Although I’m sure we will look back at this transcript once it happens and find we were being overly dramatic.

 **HGottlieb:** I cannot imagine we could cock it up *that* badly.

 **newwwts:** we’ve gotten this far

 

Three weeks later, in winter 2017, a team from the Los Angeles senior staff met the small crew from Lima in the Shatterdome launch bay. As the LA Marshall spoke with the two visiting Rangers, a pair of scientists stepped away to talk over by one of the access elevators. The rest of the gathered staff paid them no mind until their conversation had escalated in volume to the point where it was now impossible to ignore. And then there they were - a thin man leaning on a cane exchanging heated words with a shorter man who for his part had decided to start screaming shrilly. They carried on in this way for five minutes before they stormed off in opposite directions.

In 2020, a PPDC bureaucrat with a short memory assigned them both to the now-aging Shatterdome in Hong Kong, where they continued their years-long argument amidst an ever-shrinking staff.

In January 2025, their direct efforts contributed to the closing of the Breach, and the end of the twelve-year long kaiju assault.

In June 2025 they were married.


End file.
